In a cold warehouse at the Reese Technology Center, the Llano Estacado RoboRaiders are building a marvel

Llano Estacado RoboRaiders FIRST Robotics Team members Madeleine St. Clair, 17 left, and Matthew Anderson, 17, replace a wheel on their competition robot in their work area at the Reese Center Tuesday. (Stephen Spillman / AJ Media)

Llano Estacado RoboRaiders FIRST Robotics Team member Matthew Anderson, 17, uses a controller plugged into a computer to wirelessly move the competition robot in their work area at the Reese Center Tuesday. (Stephen Spillman / AJ Media)

Llano Estacado RoboRaiders FIRST Robotics Team members Madeleine St. Clair, 17 left, and Matthew Anderson, 17, replace a wheel on their competition robot in their work area at the Reese Center Tuesday. (Stephen Spillman / AJ Media)

Llano Estacado RoboRaiders FIRST Robotics Team member Jeffrey Cordero, 17 from left, works with mentors George Tan and Jerry Paul to help replace a wheel on their competition robot in their work area at the Reese Center Tuesday. (Stephen Spillman / AJ Media)

The Llano Estacado RoboRaiders FIRST Robotics Team robot moves through cones in the team work area at the Reese Center Tuesday. The robot is controlled wirelessly and can move as fast as 10 miles an hour. (Stephen Spillman / AJ Media)

Something doesn’t sound right on the odd metal chassis zooming around the room. It might be a worn out wheel bearing.

A handful of teenagers in grades 7 through 12 move the 120-pound robot to a workbench and begin prodding it with screwdrivers and hammers. Red LEDs beam under chains, gears and wires. Right now, it’s just a square metal base with wheels. Eventually, it will look something like a praying mantis.

In a cold warehouse at the Reese Technology Center, the Llano Estacado RoboRaiders are building a marvel.

Sponsored by Texas Tech, the team is three weeks along in constructing a remote-controlled robot to compete in the FIRST Robotics Competition Hub City Regional on March 7-8 in Lubbock.

The team consists of 29 students complemented with 23 “mentors” — undergraduate and graduate students from Texas Tech who act as advisers and coaches in the design and building process.

“It’s very strategy-oriented,” said George Tan, lead mentor on the project.

Now in its sixth year of competition, the RoboRaiders team is composed of pre-college students from schools around the area.

Each season, FIRST teams are given a kit and six weeks to construct a competition-ready machine. Designs do not have to be limited to the parts received in the kit. Teams can spend up to $4,000 adding to their robot.

Their ultimate goal: build a machine that’s able to pick up a 2 foot yoga ball, pass it to other robots and throw it through one of two goal posts — one of which is 7 feet off the ground.

“I’ve never seen this level of cooperation required in a FIRST Robotics game before,” said Richard Gale, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Tech and the RoboRaiders’ professional adviser.

For this year’s competition, robots from 52 teams will be randomly grouped with others in alliances of three. They will earn points by working together to successfully pass and score the ball.

But just because the robots will have to compete together doesn’t mean they’ll follow the same basic design. Each one will tackle the objective of moving the ball in its own way.

“You’d be surprised at how many solutions there can be to the same problem.” Gale said.

The RoboRaiders’ bot will eventually have a long arm on the base which will be able to launch the ball through the goals.

Avery Reynolds, a junior at Frenship High School and the team’s student leader, said the RoboRaiders are still considering names, but a front-runner is “Mantis” for the shape the robot will ultimately take.

Both Reynolds and team safety captain Madeline St. Clair, a junior at Trinity Christian High School, said they are interested in pursuing careers in mechanical engineering.

St. Clair credits the FIRST program for setting her on that path.

“Being from such a small school, this is my only opportunity to do something like this,” she said.

According to Reynolds and St. Clair, building the device is a process of trial and error. Students fabricate basic shapes out of wood to find out if they will be a good fit for their overall design.

From there, students will draft custom parts using software called AutoCad. These drafts will move to a machine, called a HURAC, which cuts the parts out of metal.

Other parts are recycled from RoboRaiders’ arsenal of retired robots — old soldiers like “Boomer,” who used a piston to punch a ball across the arena and “Archer” who hoisted inner tubes up in the air.

Students test drive the robot with an Xbox controller. Tan said it can run at speeds up to 10 mph as it maneuvers around obstacles placed on a patch of carpet to test the operators. Originally it had been able to drive at speeds of 17 mph, but Tan said this gave it too much power.

Gale said this year’s team is ahead of schedule compared to years past because of their cooperation and communication.

“You have to learn to work as a team,” he said. “You have to learn to rely on your teammates, value their strengths and work together.”